


Hopscotch

by auditoryeden



Series: Reset and Recovery [2]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: Alternate season 7, F/M, Sequel to Debridement, alternate season 6, no explicit sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 22:18:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8303263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auditoryeden/pseuds/auditoryeden
Summary: It's stressful enough, working on a national campaign, even before you add in the quandaries of dating the opposition's campaign manager.





	

When Josh barrels into the elevator, tired, frazzled, and visibly discombobulated, it’s like a dream come true. She smiles at him with what little energy she has left, and when he leans over to examine the lit buttons, only to settle back against the wall without selecting one for himself, meeting his eyes sends a little thrill through her chest. They’re on the same floor. There’s two nights before the Corn Growers Expo, and she’s on the same floor as her erstwhile boss turned lover. The possibilities seem endless.

They don’t exchange words on their way down the hall, walking side by side, each watching the numbers and counting silently, catching shifty sideways glances so as not to be caught unawares when the other locates their own room. When they arrive, simultaneously, at rooms facing one another across the hallway, a guilty grin passes between them. Josh’s pathological failure to grasp the function of a key card gives Donna an excellent excuse to stand too close to him, and she swallows reflexively at the look in his eye, as his focus flits between her eyes and her lips. Then she’s peeling herself away, back to her own door, picking up the manila envelope of schedules and documents, casting a come-hither look over her shoulder, and towing her crap into her room. The door shuts behind her with an audible snap.

Thirty minutes later, she grins at the peephole, and opens her door with her best seductive grin, and a giggle on her lips. “Hey there, Wild Thing.”

* * *

“Josh Lyman,” Josh’s voice says, sounding about an octave lower than usual, and gravelly to boot.

“Hey,” Donna greets him, aware that her voice is equally exhausted-sounding. “It’s me.”

“Donna.” He’s audibly savoring her name. “Jesus, I miss you. How’s your day?”

She has to take a minute to get the lump in her throat under control before she can reply, “Oh, good, mostly just long. A bunch of the interns got wasted last night, so they were all wincing this morning. Will kept dropping binders at them.”

“Sounds like he likes his interns nearly as much as I do,” Josh remarks, with feeling. “Twitchy little shits.”

“Well, they were extra twitchy round about lunch. One of the girls had so much coffee she actually started crying. Is everyone on the Santos campaign about fifteen?”

“Everyone but me and the Congressman,” Josh confirms, and then he treats Donna to a series of noises that suggest he’s flopping down on his bed. With a long, luxuriant groan, he goes on, “I’m pretty sure we were never as young as some of these kids are.”

“I think maybe we were, back before we got to the White House and stopped having weekends.” Donna twiddles the pen in her hand.

“You were, maybe. I remember when you started, you seemed like a kid.”

“Don’t count yourself out, old man,” she parries, “You were plenty dorky and immature yourself.”

“Yeah, but those things don’t have anything to do with how old I am,” he points out, with a self-deprecating snort. “Which means, by the way, that there’s no chance I’m gonna grow out of them.”

“Oh, darn, and here I was hoping.” She’s too tired to inject the full force of her sarcasm into the remark, but enough gets in to make her point.

They marinate for a moment in the sound of one another’s breathing, before Josh says, reluctantly, “I gotta go to sleep, Donna...”

“No, I...me, too,” she agrees, blushing for no real reason and stammering a bit. “Sleep well?”

“Sweet dreams,” he tells her, then after a pause, “I love you.”

“I love you,” she replies, and then he’s hanging up, and she’s left, staring into space, smiling at the wall. “I love you,” she repeats, to the empty room.

* * *

The hotel lobby is too brightly lit, and Donna’s excruciatingly aware that she looks grey under the harsh lights. It’s eleven PM and they’re shipping out from South Carolina in about an hour, so everyone’s gathered in the hotel lobby, about to clamber onto the bus and pass out.

Josh and the Santos party are nowhere to be seen.

In a good world, a world where Donna was an objective and passionate employee, that would be a good thing. Rival campaigns tend to step on each others toes, which is bad for not only morale but also scheduling. She should be heaving a sigh of relief that they’re missing the Dr Seuss campaign, like ships in the night.

The fact is, though, she hasn’t seen Josh Lyman in nearly a week. Hasn’t gotten him alone near a bed in nearly three times that. It’s possible that her political ambitions are being overridden by her desire to have sex with the opposition’s campaign manager, but right about now Donna’s prepared to live with that reality.

But only if it means she gets to actually spend some time with the man she loves.

They’re still in the giddy, astonished phase of saying the words. Every night when he rings off, usually at some outrageous hour, he takes a second or two to savor the moment before he tells her. It’s one of the myriad adorable things she’s learned about Josh since they embarked on whatever this thing is that they’re doing. He tells her he loves her with a kind of reverence she’d once thought he reserved only for Mets wins and real New York bagels. He takes his time about it, too, when he can. The morning she’d flown out to New Hampshire he’d spent a solid three minutes staring into her eyes, stroking her cheek, smiling like a kid at Christmas, and then he’d whispered the words into her ear and kissed her so tenderly she thought her heart might break.

It’s a good thing she loves him so much. Santos and his dog and pony show would be in real trouble if the world ever found out how much of a sap Josh Lyman really is.

A bus pulls up at the door of the hotel, but it’s not theirs, which is unsubtly emblazoned with the words “Russell for President” and all manner of patriotic iconography. This bus is more accurately a large RV, and it’s not in the best repair. Duct-taped to its side are a series of Santos lawn signs.

Donna feels her heart rate pick up even as her stomach drops. He’s on his way in, she’s on her way out. What little overlap they’re going to have will be five minutes in the lobby of a fucking Hampton Inn in South Carolina at nearly goddamn midnight in front of both the campaigns. What she’s about to get with Josh is going to amount to a handshake, basically, and maybe a longing minute or two of eye sex.

This is not, she muses, disgusted and tired, how humans are meant to live.

The Santos contingent begins to drizzle through the doors, looking just as haggard and unpleasant as the Russell people, with a similar assortment of suitcases and garment bags. In the middle of the pack, looking by far and away the most exhausted, is Josh, with his fancy backpack slung over his trench coat and a look of dejected misery on his face.

That, alongside the faintly ruffled look of his hair, is so pathetic and heartrending and _Josh_ that Donna, frankly, cannot be held accountable for her actions.

So she leaves her suitcase and her garment bag and crosses the lobby to him, in a few quick steps. He spots her as soon as she begins to move, but can’t seem to do more than blink at her.

“You need to get some sleep,” she tells him, the chatter around them loud enough to cover her softly-pitched voice. His cheek is scratchy like sandpaper under her palm, and she observes the cast of his skin, the way his beard is completely silver.

“I’m not the only one,” he rebuts, sliding an arm around her waist.

It feels so nice to lean her head against his shoulder, inhale the smell of him, let him pull her close. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Donna croaks. “We’re on the road tonight.”

“I thought you were leaving in the morning?”

“I thought you were getting in around seven?”

Josh scoffs, quietly. “The Congressman had an impromptu Q and A. Or two.”

Donna sighs. “Something came up for the morning.”

“Mmm.”

They’d decided, during their last night together in Nashua, that they wouldn’t broadcast their relationship to their colleagues. Donna was already facing pressure from Will and the Vice President to use her unique perspective on Josh’s psyche against him, and while Will was an otherwise decent human, neither of them trusted him to respect the sanctity of their relationship. Less still if he were to know that they were actively embroiled in an affair. There was also the issue of loyalty, trust. Between themselves, it was clear that no one was going to be compromising anyone’s integrity for the sake of the nomination. To their bosses, that wouldn’t be so clear. It was easier, they had agreed, to keep it off the radar.

That had been back before they’d remembered what unique hell a campaign schedule is. That had been before the three near-misses and myriad passing glances of the past few weeks. There’s been no formal repeal of their established policy, but they’re holding one another as though they’re never going to let go, right now, with the eyes of the world upon them.

“I love you,” Josh tells her, into her hair. “I hate this, but I love you.”

“You love campaigning,” she accuses, affectionately. “And I love you.”

“Yeah, you got me,” he laughs, and presses a kiss to the crown of her head. “That being said, this is the worst.”

“Yes.” It’s not so much that Donna doesn’t care that her boss is probably watching. At this point it’s almost proud defiance, when she raises her head and kisses Josh. The kiss is sleepy and slow and nowhere near as indulgent as she desires, but this is public, after all.

When they break apart, she pats his cheek again. “You should get checked in. And shave. And sleep.”

“I think your bus is here,” Josh tells her, ruefully.

It is.

Josh walks her back to her suitcase with a hand on her back, has to swallow reflexively as she gathers her things and faces him. “God,” he breathes. “I miss you.”

“Me, too.”

* * *

Hampton Inns are basically exactly the same anywhere you go. The one in Nashua had been interesting primarily because the breakfast area had been unusually small, and because of a convenient back entrance that had allowed Donna to covertly escape in the night and visit with Josh.

The Denver edition is wholly uninteresting, from the position of the concierge desk (past the doors, to the right-hand side, facing the coffee counter) to the layout of the floors, to the cookie-cutter, black-and-white, mock-artsy prints on the walls. It is, however, clean, quiet, and familiar, so Donna is relatively comfortable as she settles in with a paper cup of complimentary mint tea to call her Josh.

Her Josh. It’s the way she’s begun to categorize him in her own head. She’s not totally sure what it is that they’re doing. Obviously, they’re having sex, really wonderful sex, frankly. They’re in love and spare no excuse to tell each other so. Things become more complicated in light of their current employment situation, pitted as they are against one another in the professional arena. Dating, besides seeming a woefully insufficient term for whatever this is, implies some kind of public face, public commitment. What they have is a deep, intense, passionate, private commitment. Of some kind.

It’s not important enough to Donna that she wastes vast tracts of thought on it. Only when she’s listening to the computerized ringing of Josh’s phone, waiting for him to pick up, does she seriously muse on what his title ought to be in her life. Boyfriend seems both wrong and slightly juvenile. Lover has negative connotations in their line of work. Significant other is hilariously unwieldy. Paramour, Sam’s suggestion, is just plain hilarious.

A not insignificant part of her thinks that his correct title should be husband, but the rest of her recognizes that they’re not quite there yet.

There’s a click as Josh answers his phone. “Josh Lyman speaking.”

“Joshua,” Donna sighs, cozying down into the duvet. “How are things?”

“Cold,” he reports, sounding nasal. “You know Boston.”

“I do,” she agrees. “How’s the Congressman holding up?”

“That’s a clear violation of the Rules, Miss Moss,” Josh rasps at her. This, followed by a sneeze and a moment of coughing.

Donna sits up against her headboard, frowning intensely at the thin air. “Joshua, are you sick?”

“No.” His voice is petulant and congested, and he answers too quickly.

“Really.” There’s nothing she can do besides load her tone with disapproval and sip at her tea.

“It’s possible I may have contracted a cold of some kind,” Josh croaks, “But it’s not serious and I’m getting over it.”

Donna smiles widely into the phone. “Sure you are.”

* * *

The campaigns arrive within hours of each other. Russell is at the Mariot, and the Santos bus pulls up at the Econolodge across the street. Donna spots them as she’s climbing into a volunteer’s car to go to a meeting with some local news stations. It’s unreasonably difficult to shut the door, put on her seat belt, and let the local worker drive out of the parking lot and away from the hotel district.

Three hours later, just past normal dinner hours, she arrives back at the hotel, aggravated, tired, but successful. The Santos bus has vanished again, but chances are good they’re riding it to and from every event, with so little cash on hand. Donna has a glorious few hours off, now, hours she’d hoped she might be able to scam Josh into visiting her, once she’d spotted the tattered lawn signs.

Her erstwhile chauffeur bids her goodnight, pealing out of the hotel lot like his ass is on fire, and after a long moment staring at the wood-chipped borders and the weakly-colored evening sky, Donna fishes out her phone, shoots off a simple text.

_355._

Several hours later she’s received neither text nor call nor glorious visitation. What she has received is a take-away order of KFC and a bottle of cheap wine from the gas station down the road, these partially consumed alone, in bed, with C-Span playing.

When someone knocks on the door, of course she answers it, and of course, when it’s a couple interns and Will’s assistant, she lets them in. They have brought beer, and her booty call is MIA. Two and two equals four.

Except that, around midnight, someone taps on her door, only barely loudly enough to catch her attention.

She gets up to answer it while her young companions continue to chatter and drink, and her heart just about stops when the door opens to reveal Josh, looking tired and disheveled but eager.

“Hey,” he greets her, but then the noise from behind her registers with him. “Um, I didn’t realize...”

“Hold that thought,” Donna tells him, suddenly consumed with an efficient fervor. She leaves one hand on the door as she turns to her room at large. “Hey!” she says, not quite shouting. “Everyone out!”

It’s not subtle. It’s not dignified. It’s not even particularly romantic, watching three twenty-somethings file past her, giving her and Josh shifty, knowing looks. But then they’re gone and Josh is stepping into her room and into her arms and pressing his mouth to hers.

“Oh, my god, I missed you,” she mumbles against his lips, pushing his backpack to the floor with a significant thump. His coat follows swiftly behind, and then she starts to fight blindly with the knot of his tie.

“Donna,” he says, putting his hands over hers. “Donna. Wait a minute.”

They break apart, panting. Josh looks at her like she’s made of spun gold or something, stares at her. Drinks her in, practically.

“Hi,” he says, developing a shadow of his dorkiest grin.

He’s so happy-looking, with his warm eyes and his sweet smile and his gorgeous dimples. For the first time in weeks the angry snake in Donna’s stomach stops roiling, settles down for a well-deserved rest. She can see the tiny green flecks in his irises, those little flecks she’d discovered for the first time dancing in his arms the night of President Bartlett’s inauguration. He’d been happy then, but now there’s more than excitement and joy. Right now, in her arms, he looks like he’s coming home.

She knows the feeling.

“I love you, Josh,” she whispers, fighting the tears that are bound and determined to make an appearance.

“Donnatella,” he begins, in his most dramatically mushy tone of voice, “I adore you.”

“Laugh it up, Romeo.” His tie is pretty short work, since she can stare straight at it as she unknots it. “Shirt off.”

“You look charming,” he points out, plucking at the pillaged Yale Law t-shirt and flannel boxers. “When did you, ah, _acquire_ these articles of my clothing?”

“1998,” she answers him, with a slight flutter of eyelashes. It’s immensely gratifying to watch him visibly counting backwards in his head, even as she’s deliberately unbuttoning his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says, disbelief coloring his voice. “You stole a bunch of my stuff _before_ Rosslyn? Before we were even in office?”

“I stayed in your guest room during transition, didn’t I? And...I lived on your floor for a month during the campaign.” She shrugs, finishes the shirt, and shucks him out of it.

Josh catches her hands before she can drag his undershirt off and gives her his very best delighted teasing face, with the eyebrows and the dimples and the suppressed grin. “You stole my underwear while you were a volunteer?”

“Well, I wasn’t getting paid,” she reasons. “Anyway, you gave me the shirt.”

“And yet I’ve always wondered what happened to it.” His look of faint reproof is definitively spoiled by the smile twitching around his lips.

She smiles coquettishly. “It’s remotely possible that you were the worse for a couple fingers of scotch when it happened.”

“The truth emerges,” he quips, and then he’s pulling her close again, kissing her again, pressing the whole length of his body into hers.

If, when she’d been starting out in the world of dating, you’d told a fifteen-year-old Donna Moss that someday the feel of a man’s knees knocking against hers would do it for her, you’d probably have mortified her beyond speech, and she still wouldn’t have believed you. It’s true, though. Josh’s knees bump against hers, nudge them apart, as he walks her backwards to her bed, and the anticipation, the full-body contact, is enervating. She collapses onto the mattress with no encouragement, and drags him down with her, grinning madly.

“Holy mother of God,” Josh breathes, high-voiced against her lips.

“Mmmhm,” Donna hums, wrapping a leg around his hip.

* * *

They are in Hartford, Connecticut, which is, in Josh’s opinion, the ugliest city in the entire state. She knows this because she’s been here with him at least four times before now, and on every single one he’s felt the need to express his opinion.

No power on earth could possess her to give voice to it, but Donna agrees with him.

It’s a concrete and glass jungle, with the sad and permanently-under-construction edifice of Interstate 84 running through its heart. Compared with New Haven, or Greenwich, or any of the other, smaller towns and villages she’s glimpsed, the state Capitol frankly has neither heart, nor charm, nor the kind of cosmopolitan suavity that might justify its hyperdeveloped sprawl.

There’s also not much chance of Russell doing a drop of good for himself, campaigning this far north. His base is down along the Sound, where the investment bankers out of New York have their lovely beach houses. In a race where her candidate has been accidentally undermined on the everyman flank, she’s tried to point out that he needs to campaign to the people who’ll actually vote for him, at least a little, that schmoozing up in the land of Santos decideds is a waste of money, but the Vice President’s been adamant, and here they are.

Her point is definitely being made by the reaction of the crowds. Santos is being mobbed by cheerful middle class citizens, ecstatic to see the man they’re going to vote for in the primaries. Russell is being politely received by some donors and local business leaders.

It’s a bad coincidence that the one day each campaign decided to devote to Connecticut and its seven electoral votes happened to be the same day. Worse still that while Santos is riling up support, Bingo Bob is lunching with big wigs and doing nothing to combat his image as a pocket man.

On the upside, though, she’s in the same state, nay, the same city, as Josh again.

This time no chances have been taken. The minute she’d seen on the news that the Santos and Russell campaigns were going to be in the same place at the same time, she’d shot Josh an email instructing him to block off a lunch with her in his schedule, and she herself had coded her corresponding planner entry red, for urgent and unmovable.

So she’s glowing with the satisfaction of good planning when Josh meets her outside the glass doors of the hotel and kisses her squarely on the lips.

“Where to?” he asks her, correctly assuming that, as in all things, she’s already made plans for their time.

“There was a pretty good bistro down that way,” Donna indicates with a nod. “I liked their salads and their burgers are sad so they’ll burn them as much as you like.”

“Do you have any idea how unsanitary hamburger meat is?” Josh asks, holding out his arm for Donna to take. They set off down the busy street at an easy pace, reveling in the crisp, comfortable April air. “If it’s not cooked all the way through odds are ten to one you drop dead of salmonella.”

“Salmonella doesn’t kill you, diarrhea does,” Donna corrects him, comfortably. “And the odds have got to be better than that because I should be dead a hundred times over, by your logic.”

“It’s gross,” he contends. “All the little leftover bits of cow ground together? Gross.”

It’s entertaining to hear how his mind works, and Donna finds herself grinning at him. She’d thought there was little left for her to learn about this man, but here he is, proving her wrong. “Why do you even order them?”

“It’s a big hunk of meat on a sandwich,” he argues, reasonably. “Plus, if you ask for a quarter pound of roast beef with fries on the side people look at you funny.”

“And I thought I was the crazy one,” Donna snorts. Josh shoots her a sideways look, draws to a halt.

“This lunch?” he says, a caricature of casualness. “How long were you planning on it being?”

“Mmm.” Donna capitalizes expertly on a chance to give him a wide-eyed, soulful stare. “I think I have an hour blocked off...or...two.”

“Right.” He takes off again, walking with efficient vigor, and even as she’s dragged along in his wake the mischievous smile bubbles onto her face. He looks back over his shoulder with a knowing glint in his eye. “You think this place does takeout?”

* * *

Whatever else has been happening on the Santos campaign, and boy have things been happening, Josh clearly hasn’t been eating.

Between the end of the primary season and the scramble for the convention, the Santos and Russell boats haven’t shared port in ages, only coming together metaphorically to celebrate the suspension of the Hoynes campaign. Donna hasn’t seen her boyfriend (and isn’t that a strange thought, Josh Lyman, Donna’s boyfriend) in about two months, and those two months have taken a worrying toll.

Weight loss is something that happens on the trail. The days are long and grueling, the food is unappetizing, fried, or both, and black coffee frequently takes the place of one or two meals a day. Everyone looks a little skinny by the end of the death march to November. Josh, though, has taken it to the extreme. His suits look like he bought them two sizes too large and his belt is on the last hole. His face is grey and gaunt, and his last haircut was too close, so he’s sporting an emaciated, severe look more appropriate to an undertaker than to one of the most brilliant political minds of the party.

Maybe, Donna muses, the old adage about cameras and ten pounds is true, because he didn’t look quite this bad on TV.

They’re back in DC, finally, for the very last primary. It’s not a high stakes result, since the District boasts only 46 delegates, nowhere near enough to take anyone over the top, and the numbers are skewed enormously toward Santos, who is perceived as neither irredeemably corrupt nor in the pocket of mining interests. The citizenry here are both wickedly cynical and unusually savvy, exactly the kind of constituency Matt Santos thrives on.

Donna had been left behind in New Jersey to help wrap up operations there, so she’s flying in on a commercial flight, a few days after the rest of the swarm.

Josh, in his grey-faced, malnourished glory, is waiting for her by arrivals, a dull happy gleam in his tired eyes. “Donnatella Moss,” he greets her, taking two steps and enveloping her in a hug that has too many ribs. “Boy are you a sight for sore eyes.”

“Have you eaten anything that didn’t come out of plastic wrap this week?” she demands, wrapping her arms tight around his waist and burying her face in his shoulder. “And did you ever schedule a cardiologists appointment?”

“My day was lovely, dear, how was yours?” Josh responds, but the sarcasm in his voice is mild. “Yes, I ate with Leo last night. There was pasta, and two different kinds of vegetables. No, I have not made an appointment, I’ve been a little busy trying to run a campaign for President of the United States.”

“Ha ha,” Donna grouses. “If you don’t get on that, I’m going to make it for you, and I’m going to tell the Congressman all about it so you have to go.”

“Funnily enough I think the Congressman might be on my side this time,” he says.

“You got him into this mess, I sincerely doubt he’d let you drop dead and leave him stuck in the middle of it.”

Josh presses a kiss to the side of her head, just above her ear. “Have you even met the Congressman?”

“He sat on me, the night of the stem cell vote.” With a luxuriant sigh, Donna pulls away from their hug, takes the opportunity to drink in Josh’s presence. “Also, he cornered me after that meeting in Pennsylvania to interrogate me about our relationship.”

It’s hard to say which of these things has rendered Josh totally speechless, but the wrinkled brow and the humorless stare are yet more proof in Donna’s book that this man needs food, sex, and sleep.

Truly, it is convenient that these are precisely the things she herself requires.

“Come on,” she says, “Let’s go home. If you’re really nice to me, I’ll burn you a steak for dinner.”

Caught up in confiscating her suitcase, it takes him a moment to level her a look of profoundest disgust. “What kind of heathen are you? Everyone knows you don’t cook a steak past medium.

“Besides,” he announces, stepping past her and her incredulous stare, towards the doors, “I’ve already got stuff prepped for dinner tonight.”

“Do tell?” Donna falls into step beside him. “Takeout?”

“Lamb, actually.”

“You’re cooking?’ She doesn’t mean her voice to sound so disbelieving, but it’s hard to stop it. Josh honors her with a dimpled, boyish grin that looks odd on his bony face.

“I am an adult, and I managed to live for thirty-eight years before I met you,” he reminds her. “I’m actually cooking.”

“Excellent,” Donna proclaims, taking his free hand. “Wine?”

“Got some,” he assures her. “It’s red to go with the food.”

“Vegetables?”

“Salad.” The hot, humid air of DC slaps them in the face as they pass through the glass doors, into the sunlight. “Car’s this way.”

“I love you more than coffee,” Donna tells him, feeling his palm against hers, watching his face and his shoulders and the way he tilts his head as he squints at the sun.

* * *

"I don't understand how this happened," Donna hiccups, audibly upset. "I mean, I've known you for nearly a decade and I didn't know this? How did I not—" This is, she knows, ridiculous. He’d told her at the airport he was cooking, and while she’d sort of assumed that meant she’d be doing a lot of forceful helping, she had mostly believed him. She’s just feeling way too many things, right now, has been feeling too many things for too long, and they’ve all decided to manifest at the sight of Josh in an apron. Her eyes and her chest start to burn at approximately the same time.

"Are you actually crying? Donna, do I literally see tears—Oh, God, stop please." Josh drops his dish towel and make his way around the table. "Oh, God, you're all...verklempt..."

"I know your social security number, and I didn’t know this?" Donna demands, tearful. Josh manfully suppresses a grin and wipes at her cheeks with his thumbs.

"The fact that I can cook was never exactly relevant before, Donna. And it's definitely not worth crying over."

“I’m...I’m...” Words fail her, taunting her as another wail boils up in her chest. It’s definitely exhaustion doing this to her, the release of stress after nine months of brutal uncertainty and emotional angst, but knowing that doesn’t make her tears any less plentiful. Josh crouches in front of her chair and watches her sob, frowning and stroking her behind an ear.

“I’m pretty sure,” he begins, in a soft, comforting murmur, “Although, you know, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m pretty sure that you’re not actually crying because I’m cooking you dinner. I think you’re crying because you haven’t slept for eight consecutive hours since Christmas, and because you ended up not liking your new boss very much, and because you’re not used to being taken care of. That’s fine. You just need to cry it out, and then we’ll get some food in you, and get you into bed. Sound good? You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

That almost makes it worse, Josh of all people being so soothing and reasonable. It might be more effective for him to go into the living room and shout that he needs a memo, stat, or in some way require her help. That’s the man she’s used to, really, the man who relies on her, might not be able to find his head if she hadn’t screwed it on. This accommodating Joshua, seeking to please, is an animal she’s really only seen in snatches on her own account.

Or, maybe not. It’s possible that she’s spent a fair amount of time with him, this past six months, but he’s never really been in a position to take care of her. They’ve mostly been in bed, where she had no expectations to bias her experience of him, and at all other times they’ve been in public, shoehorned into professional roles. The closest thing he’s been able to manage to providing for her has really been determinately refusing to let her pay for any of their meals, which really wasn’t anything paradigm-breaking.

He’s moved to rubbing slow circles on her back, and these seem to be working. The intense surge of anxiety is fading, gradually, the visceral urge to sob dying by inches. Josh has never been privy to one of her panic attacks before, but for a first timer he’s handling it with aplomb.

Probably because he’s had more than a few himself, she thinks.

“Any better?” he asks, voice still pitched low.

“Yeah,” she’s able to whisper. “Thanks.”

His only response is a kiss on the crown of her head, and then he’s standing, groaning a little, and moving back into his kitchen, where the oven is beeping insistently.

Racks clatter as he moves things around, and then the oven door swings shut with a pneumatic whump, tinny beeps sound, and he’s making his way back to her, pulling out a chair and settling. “You wanna talk?”

“Not really.” What she wants, Donna finds, is to be close to him, so she moves from her chair to his lap, settling in his arms and resting her face against his shoulder. “This is good.”

“This is very good,” Josh leers, but his hands belie his voice, coming to rest respectfully at her waist. A long, silent peace steals over them, punctuated by soft breathing and the occasional odd sound from the oven. It’s a kind of quiet they’ve shared hundreds of times in their years together, but rarely, since their relationship transformed. The specter of one week’s tortured radio silence was enough to keep them in lively banter whenever they’ve been together since, but in truth Donna’s been aching for this feeling. When she’s with Josh, simply not talking, she feels comfortable and unpressed. Whether they’re working or watching a movie, or simply being together, it’s always been therapeutic. Until she met him, she’d never had that.

And more than ever, she’s starting to see that she wants to have it for the rest of her life.

* * *

The month-and-a-half gap between the end of the primaries and the start of the DNC had made a great improvement in Josh’s looks. Eating regularly, sleeping eight hours a night with the love of his life in his arms, it had put color back into his face, given him the pep and energy of their early White House days, rendered him almost chipper and cooperative, even as he worked to shore up support for his candidate and bargain out a VP pick. The three days immediately preceding the Convention do away with all that.

Even sex is insufficient to distract him from the stomach-gnawing anxiety of uncertainty. Should he have tried harder to convince Santos to accept the Vice-Presidential spot on Russell’s ticket? Was there any way he could have played out the last six months that ended with Santos as the presumptive nominee? In the snatches of time Donna manages to carve out with him, she can see him growing progressively less and less well-hinged. He still greets her with a heartbreaking grin and revels in her touch, but his eyes seem far-away.

Not that she’s untroubled by her own woes.

Although the Vice-President’s managed to net the most delegates, all the major states swung for Santos in the end, and Russell’s lead is by a truly uninspiring hair. With John Hoynes trailing pathetically behind and plotting a desperate lunatic’s victory, there’s no guarantee that it’ll be her horse that wins the race, and it’s becoming exhausting, smiling for the cameras and preaching a gospel of sturdy American values and comprehensive experience. Bob Russell, although a decent human being, isn’t passionate about any issue and doesn’t have any vision. At the beginning of the race he’d seemed like the only choice, and therefor it was her responsibility to work to get him elected, but against Matthew Santos or even John Hoynes, he’s basically a big hat and some cowboy boots. Whether he wins or loses at the Convention, Donna is sure of one thing; she’s ready to stop pitching for him.

It’s not as though the Democratic nominee is even going to be able to win against Vinnick, she muses, sinking deeper into the couch she’s managed to commandeer. While she snatches a ten-minute sandwich break the rest of the team is milling around her, scrambling to get all their ducks neatly organized, making bargains with delegates for the second ballot, and it’s all going to be for nothing, because Vinnick is a powerful, honest, middle-of-the-road candidate who’s going ride a victory parade right to the White House. Josh is giving himself an ulcer for nothing. Will is going gray for nothing. All these kids have left home to come do grunt work on a campaign that is going nowhere, either in two days or in three months.

It’s not like her to be so maudlin, but she’s operating on two hours’ sleep and the existential despair is getting harder to repress.

And if she’s going to be perfectly honest with herself, she wants this whole circus to end.

Campaigning is exhausting, shitty, unpleasant work, shittier still when the candidate is a carefully groomed hairdo. Back in December, when her life felt like a hamster wheel of pointlessness and self-defeat, running away with the circus had seemed like a great idea. After all, if a Presidential campaign could drag the star of a college dropout to a relatively prestigious position at the White House, surely another one could launch a capable and qualified woman to even greater heights.

Now, though, she’s tired, and her leg hurts a lot, and she misses her friends and her apartment. She’s not running away from Josh anymore, and in a more rational frame of mind she can see that her options for meaningful, challenging employment are many and varied, and don’t have to hinge on Russell.

She lets her head loll back, lets herself sink into a momentary bubble of nerveless apathy.

One way or another, there’s not much time left.

* * *

Her heart is thrumming nervously as she puts one foot in front of the other, one in front of the other, one in front of the other. The new Santos campaign office is sterile and industrial-looking, shiny new, courtesy of the DNC’s cash.

It feels like her ribs are contracting a little more with every step she takes towards Josh’s office.

She’s good, she tells herself, he knows she’s good, she has a whole campaign as a senior strategic aide under her belt, and he needs her.

She can do this.

“Hey, Donna, right?” a cheerful, smiling woman with short brown hair greets her. “I’m Ronna.”

“Ronna,” Donna repeats, brain fogging unhelpfully with nervous energy. “I’m Donna. I mean--”

“Yeah, I know who you are,” Ronna assures her. “It’s cool, Josh is in a meeting, but I’m gonna go get him for you now.” Then she’s bustling away, shaking her head and grinning to herself.

By the time she’s bustling back, assuring Josh, “You’ll want this one,” Donna’s heart is ready to burst. The irony is great and terrible.

Josh reacts to seeing her exactly the way she thought he might. His initial expression is dumbstruck, fading nicely into a brilliant, dimpled smile, before settling into fond confusion. “Hey,” he says, “What’re you doing here?”

His hand lands on the small of her back as he guides her into his office, and that helps to quell some of her panic. “I’m actually glad you asked that. I’m proud to say I’ve grown a lot in the last few months. The Russell campaign gave me some wonderful opportunities; I took an active role in drafting policy positions and was eventually promoted to the role of Campaign Spokesperson.”

“Donna...” Josh says, stepping back and frowning. It’s like she can feel him growing distant.

“Please, Josh, let me get through this,” Donna entreats him, “It’s one of the more awkward moments of a lifetime.”

“I can’t….” Josh drags both hands over his face, then reaches up to scrub violently at his hair.

“I’m good, is my point,” Donna surges on. “We both know it. And rumor has it you could use a deputy.”

He gives her an extraordinarily hangdog look, the one that years of experience has taught her means, _you’re really going to make me do this,_ then moves around his desk to collapse into his chair. It squeaks as he swivels to access one of the drawers, pulling out a folder.

Her stomach freezes to ice inside her.

“‘Matthew Santos is throwing a ton of numbers at you hoping you'll be so confused as to miss the fact that his education plan is both impractical and unaffordable. He was a House member, you'd think behavior like that would annoy him.’ Donna Moss, Spokesperson, Russell for President Campaign,” he reads, settling the folder open on the desktop. “There’s a lot more like that. Donna, I...don’t make me read all of them.”

“I didn’t mean that he--” Donna starts, but Josh cuts her off, reading again.

“Claiming that three House terms qualifies you to be President is like me saying I'm a foreign relations expert because I ordered Kung Pao last night.” He looks up at her with furrowed brows.

Her heart is hammering in her throat as she says, “I didn’t say that, did I?”

“You did, and you know you did, because we argued about it when it happened. That, you might recall, is when we established the Rules. I’m pretty sure you were a fan of the Rules. February 26; Coffee, Cake, and Candidates; Raleigh, North Carolina. ‘He wasn't a military strategist, he was a pilot. Ask him about the overhead compartment, not about defense.’”

“You called Russell a cowpoke,” Donna protests. “You said the President avoided him in the halls. You hummed "These Boots are Made for Walking" every time the press mentioned his name!”

“Yeah,” Josh agrees, looking pained, “but I won.”

“It was my job, Josh,” Donna tells him, trying hard not to let her voice break. He stares at her pensively for a long moment before he swivels in his chair again, stands.

“Donna, I can’t hire you. I’ve got an..an airplane hangar full of people out there, looking to me for direction, I’ve got a candidate who doesn’t trust any of them, and frankly neither do I, and if you think I don’t want you on my side for this…?”  
“Josh--” Donna tries to stand, tries to make for the door, but he reaches out and cups her elbow, and it’s like she’s rooted to the spot. Josh looks her right in the eye, in that disconcerting way of his, and speaks, low and quick.

“I can’t hire you, Donna. I mean, for one thing, you’re my girlfriend. But even if you weren’t, even if you were some stranger coming to me off the convention, I still couldn’t hire you, because you’re the face on the message that Matt Santos is incompetent and unqualified. If your guy had taken the nomination and I’d gone to Will looking for work, you think he’d be able to bring me in?”

She opens her mouth but she can’t seem to get any sound around the humiliated lump in her throat. There’s nothing she can say to it, because she sees his point, she does. She even sees how their relationship might prove problematic. She does get it, now that he’s pointed it out.

But she should have seen it before he had to.

Josh is still talking, saying something about how she’s smart and clever and he wishes, but, and Donna shakes her head, cuts him off. “Thank you for your time,” she chokes out, and then she’s turning, putting one foot in front of the other, one in front of the other. “I’ll see you when—I’ll see you,” are her parting words, and then she’s passing through his office door, down the hall, holding her head high and keeping the tears balled up in her stomach.

* * *

CJ’s couch is not the most comfortable place for a 5’9” woman to sleep every night for two weeks, but the physical misery is nothing, weighed against the potential mortification of returning to Josh’s apartment, the place she’d been starting to call home. Her own place is still being inhabited by the eccentric Janet from Treasury, and so she comes back to this living room, this apartment which, most always, is empty. CJ is totally swamped and beginning to lose her mind as CoS, and most nights is home only for a few of the small hours of the morning.

All her subsequent interviews have been much, much better than the disaster at Santos headquarters. That’s a pretty low bar, but she’s been managing to clear it, and her resume is garnering a lot of positive attention even without an “Education” section. She has followup meetings tomorrow, and hopefully at one of them she’ll be offered a job of some kind.

Maybe then she’ll feel ready to go home.

Josh had very graciously not contacted her for several hours after her hasty exit, but starting right around six, right around the time he would have gotten home, he’d begun calling and leaving messages. Messages she hadn’t listened to, letting them pile up. After seven calls spaced out over five or so hours, he’d given up, and hopefully gone to bed.

Every evening for the past two weeks, he’s called her, but he isn’t leaving messages anymore.

It makes her feel sick when she thinks about her phone, its blinking red light informing her that she’s a terrible person and a terrible partner, bailing out like this, but the thought of going back and facing him makes her equally sick. Donna’s caught between her guilt and her shame, and she knows, knows for certain, that every moment she stays away is making it all worse, is hurting him, but she can’t bring herself to action. Instead, she’s pouring herself into finding a job on her own, something that Josh isn’t even peripherally involved in. She hasn’t been listing him as a reference, has been trying hard to gloss over her time at the White House in favor of her experience on a national campaign.

She’s got a meeting with Unicef in the morning. Maybe, after that, she’ll call him.

* * *

After three harrowing weeks of total radio silence, Josh shleps home to his apartment at eleven-thirty at night, to find Donnatella Moss asleep on his couch, clearly defeated in the pursuit of staying up for him.

His whole heart constricts when he sees her there. It’s good to see that she’s physically okay, since he hasn’t had any evidence for the last twenty days that she was actually still walking around on the same planet, but these three weeks have been like déjà-vu. Donna walking out, Donna not answering her phone, Donna seemingly falling off the face of the earth, but this time with so, so much more for him to lose.

Josh has replayed her words in his head every night since she left, trying to get to sleep, _I’m never going to get you out of my system, I’m not leaving you again_. The problem is, they don’t sound so clear in his memory, not compared to her voice telling him, _Thank you for your time. I’ll see you._

And he’s been doing a lot of thinking, these weeks that she’s been gone. Hard thinking. Sad thinking. The kind of thinking that had led to the implosion of his relationships with Mandy and Amy.

Donna stirs a little, as he’s watching her, her lips opening and closing, her brows furrowing. She looks like hell, maybe even more than he does, with puffy dark circles under her eyes, and it drags at his heart to see her like that. They can fix this, he tells himself. They will.

* * *

Josh is woken in the morning, not by his alarm, but by a sudden movement of the bed. It’s the sensation of someone sitting down on Donna’s side, swinging their legs up, and then her long, slim fingers touch his hand, just enough to alert him to her presence.

He stares into the blackness behind his eyelids for a long, sick moment, trying to figure out what he’s going to say to her, but once he’s rolled over and opened his eyes, the only thing he can think of is the truth. “Donna Moss, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

She’s looking pathetic and rumpled in his rattiest Harvard sweatshirt and some flannel pants, but she’s still the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. At his words, she crumples down, curls up against his chest, and wraps her arms around him. “I know we have to talk,” she says, muffled by his tshirt, “but right now--”

“Yeah,” he agrees, and buries his face in her hair.

She smells a little different, like she’s been using a new soap, but still familiar. “CJ,” he realizes aloud. “You were staying with CJ.”

Donna’s forehead digs into his collarbone as she nods. “You smell like her,” he informs her.

“I didn’t...”A shudder moves through her body, and she pulls away from his embrace. “I didn’t want to come back here until I...I’m so, so sorry.”

It aches in his chest, watching her break down into huge, tearing sobs, but Josh doesn’t try to take her in his arms again. He doesn’t say anything, just sits up, scoots back to lean against the headboard, and he watches her scrub at her face and try to master the waves of tears.

It takes her a while to get herself under control, and her shoulders still quake with suppressed emotion, but she does manage it, and looks him in the eye again. “I shouldn’t have put you in that position,” she admits, hoarse. “With the campaign, and everything, I should have realized.”

“You think I care about that?” Josh asks, incredulous. “I mean, I wish I hadn’t had to rub it in your face, but...God, you just vanished, Donna. For almost a month! You don’t tell me where you are, don’t return a single call, for all I knew you were dead in a ditch somewhere!”

She looks immediately stricken, wrings her hands. “I’m sorry!” There’s a moment where she’s breathing deeply and swallowing repeatedly, forcing back more tears. “I just...I couldn’t see you. I felt so _stupid_...”

“I didn’t think you were stupid, Donna, which you’d’ve known if you’d talked to me about it.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to see you, Josh!” she tells him, serious and urgent. “I didn’t want you to tell me it was okay, or offer to make a few calls, I didn’t want you to give me advice, I just...I didn’t want to see you. I needed to figure this out on my own.”

“And I needed to know if you were ever coming back,” Josh points out, making an active effort to keep his voice under control. “If you needed space you could have asked for it. If you didn’t want to talk to me you could have sent a goddamn email. You didn’t have to just--” He cuts himself off, runs his hands through what’s left of his hair. “Dammit, Donna,” he sighs. “I just don’t...”

“For the last nine years of my life everything I’ve done has revolved around you,” Donna tells him, slow and measured. “I worked for you seventy, eighty hours a week, fifty-two weeks of the year, I was in love with you, and I never found a different job or a decent boyfriend because I wanted to be near you. I wanted to be close to you, and it felt like, if I could just spend every hour of every day near you, if I could be totally necessary, then maybe that would be just as good as actually being with you. I thought about what you wanted, what you needed, and I tried to be those things. When I quit, that was about proving to myself that I didn’t need you. When I went to Will, I was trying to prove I could be better than what I’d been when I was chained to you. Every choice I...” She has to stop, swallow again. “I loved working with you, and I appreciate what you did for me, professionally, but I’m not proud of the choices I made. I had to do this one on my own, because I don’t...I don’t need you, professionally. And I needed myself to see that.”

Josh frowns, opens his mouth, grimaces, runs his tongue along the inside of his teeth, thinking. “I don’t...why couldn’t you have come home?”

“Because when I’m around you, things seem easy,” she tells him. “And sometimes life isn’t supposed to be easy.”

“That is the most completely ass-backwards reasoning I’ve ever heard,” Josh informs her, not a little bitterly.

“It’s what I had to do, Josh.” Donna’s voice is quivering again, but she’s steadfast, looking straight at him. “I’m sorry that I scared you.”

“Don’t ever, and I mean _ever,_ do this again,” he instructs, reaching out for her, and gladly, she goes. Her face is tucked into Josh’s neck again when she answers. “I promise.”

“So,” Josh starts, rough-voiced, pauses to clear his throat, “Rumor has it you’ve got a new job?”

“Assistant Director of Outreach for the National Children’s Organization.”

“That sounds like fun.” His hands move slowly over her back, one of them drifts up to card through her hair. “When do you start?”  
“Yesterday,” she tells him.

“Which is why you came home,” he guesses. She nods again, and then pauses.

“You said that before, about coming home. Josh...”

His fingers curl involuntarily around the strands of hair in his grasp, and he blows a long, slow breath out through his nose, almost meditative. “I want to come back to you every night,” he tells her softly. “I want to argue with you about the dishwasher. I want you to feel safe here, even when we’re fighting. I...yeah, I want this apartment to feel like home for you, too.”

“It’s a nice apartment,” Donna agrees, “But it’s not home. You are.”

“I can work with that.”

As they settle back, arranging their limbs so that they’re holding one another, leaned against the headboard, they sink into an uneasy silence.

They are not okay, but possibly, they will be.

* * *

For election day, the whole operation goes to Houston, and Donna is along for the ride. It’s a little nerve-wracking to watch a campaign as an outsider, watch them live and die with each reporting district, with the weather reports half-way across the country. It’s almost fun, by contrast, to find excuses to drag Josh into closets and sheltered nooks, to kiss him, to persuade him to fall into bed with her in the middle of the day, all in the name of the common welfare.

All the sex in the world can’t totally pacify Josh on an adrenaline kick, though. He manages to fly off the handle completely once day has faded into evening, completely loses his cool. No one is surprised, especially not Donna, who’s spent the past nine months watching him unspool a little more with every passing week.

Every campaign Donna’s ever observed has been like this. For the first few months, everyone’s doubting, hoping, convincing the candidate. Then the voters and the candidate gain steam, gain confidence in one another, and more and more it’s the people like Josh, the ones who’d started off immutably confident, that are doubting, second-guessing. Tonight, Matt Santos is as cool as can be, his anxiety well controlled, and Josh is screaming at everything that moves.

Up on the rooftop of the hotel, he doesn’t want to be touched, doesn’t want to kiss her.

Hours later, when Leo’s died and they’ve won the Presidency of the United States, Josh can’t seem to get close enough to her, can’t seem to stop stroking her hair and kissing her face, kissing her hot, swollen eyes, sore from crying. Tonight, he’s won the biggest victory of his career, he’s taken on the greatest challenge in his life to date, and he’s lost the mentor, the father, who guided him through it all.

* * *

“So, uh, Sam kicked me out of the office today,” are the words that greet Donna as she opens the apartment door.

Josh is sprawled on the couch, his laptop on his stomach, and he gives her the sheepish smile of one who knows his guilt.

“Sam kicked you out of the office,” Donna repeats. “So he took the job?”  
“Contingent on my taking a vacation, effective immediately,” Josh elaborates. He squirms for a moment under Donna’s minatory stare, but finally cracks. “It’s possible I yelled at Otto about something pretty much trivial.”

“However can I believe such a thing,” Donna remarks, voice drier than a desert.

“He actually told me I had to be on a plane by tonight,” Josh goes on, “but, uh, I bargained him down. See, I don’t exactly want to take off on my own, and I don’t know what your week is looking like at the NCO...”

Donna fishes her planner out of her bag, and makes a big show of paging through it, examining each entry, even though she knows this is a light week, knows with a rising warmth in her chest that she can do this, she can call in sick tomorrow and cash in on some vacation. “I think this week looks pretty good,” she tells him.

* * *

In a beautiful hotel room in Montreal, walking distance from no less than five delicious restaurants and a passel of other desirable things, Donna stretches out under the sheets and takes the opportunity to ogle her sleeping boyfriend. He’s face down, naked, slack-jawed, and oddly compelling, even with the bruise-like circles and the general unhealthy paleness.

They’d spent maybe fifteen minutes bickering over where to go and how to get there, but Donna and sense had prevailed, and four hours after they left the apartment in DC they were checking in to this hotel, one suitcase and a bag of blearily purchased Canadian groceries between them.

The bottle of wine is still open on the dresser, otherwise untouched, the cheese and crackers put away in favor of more convivial pursuits. Donna’s stomach grouses aloud at the thought of food, but she suppresses the gnawing feeling, too loose-limbed and drowsy to contemplate getting up for something as trivial as food.

Josh makes a sniffling, snoring kind of noise, and Donna rolls back towards him, lays her hand on the smooth, warm skin of his back.

The sun is coming up, lighting the edges of the curtains, but they sleep on.

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed writing this, and I know some of you were eagerly awaiting it, so I hope it's lived up to whatever expectations you might have had.
> 
> Best wishes!


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